SXiQ x Beach Energy

Beach Energy needed to separate Origin systems and practices into existing or new environments within a 6-month timeframe.

The solution delivered by SXiQ consisted of services, software and hardware. SXiQ’s clever migration and cut-over strategy enabled Beach Energy to meet a very aggressive deadline and avoid significant financial impacts, delivering on it’s promise to enable the IT integration between Lattice Energy and Beach Energy at an infrastructure layer.

Customer pain points and challenges

Replacement and upgrade of WAN, LAN, End User Compute and Remote Site Hosting infrastructure at 5 sites across Australia and NZ
Ensuring continued business operations during the transition in operation oil and gas processing facilities, operating within the change management frameworks of both businesses (Origin and Beach)
Support the migration of core business process and systems from Origin (e.g. ERP, HR)
Migrate Lattice desktop and cloud-hosted applications to the Beach network
Provide an initial period of heightened support for 6 weeks whilst transitioning to the end state support model

Project challenges

Timeframe: when Beach Energy initially engaged SXiQ the remaining time to complete the separation (in December) was very aggressive. Failure to meet the deadline would result in heavy financial impacts

Location: there were a number of remote sites across Australia and New Zealand (off-shore satellite platforms) which required induction training to be completed before IT project staff were able to gain access

Technology constraints: network bandwidth was limited at a number of remote sites Extended teams: there were several stakeholders within Beach Energy, Origin Energy and Suppliers which required constant communication and coordination

Agility and speed: the program was fast-paced and requirements changed or new demands emerged which required a rapid response. There were several examples of SXiQ responding rapidly to ensure the program met it’s

Aggressive schedule: IP Telephony, new printers, application migrations, Group Drive, OT firewall migrations

The SXiQ solution

What was the combination of products/services/technologies provided?

AD migration
Aruba LAN Switches and WAPs
Fortigate SD-WAN Firewall/Routers
Telstra managed MPLS network and Cloud Gateway
VMWare ROBO Remote Site virtualisation
Cloud (AWS) IaaS Networks, Servers, Storage and security tooling
Distributed SCCM Infrastructure
Windows 10 MOE (inc O365)
Group Drive (migrate file shares into AWS and enable concurrent access across both Origin and Beach Energy networks)
Telephony solutions for each site (various technologies)
A number of firewall migrations including OT (business operations) and data centre (Palo Alto to Fortinet)
Core network switch refresh

Commercial

Flexible cloud infrastructure enabling the next phase of anticipated business expansion
Developed design patterns to enable rapid and cost-effective deployment of a new site
Introduction of management tools has reduced the manual effort associated with the on-going support of systems and networks

Technical

Seamless desktop transition for users enabled through the early deployment of new EUC devices with side-by-side networks to allow for a staged transition for each site
Cloud hosting of key applications and file services accessible concurrently from both organisations to de-risk the migration
Software-defined WAN solution introduced to increase the resilience of remote site network connectivity enabling failover between MPLS and internet based VPN connections
Resilient remote hosting solution supporting ongoing business services in the event of any single component failure
Migration of existing IP telephony solutions onto the new LAN networks
One-way trusts established from the resource domain to allow concurrent access to cloud resources
Aruba switches are significantly cheaper than Dell and Cisco

How did we develop the strategy and plan?

Strategic thinking

Examine the current and future hosting, networks and desktop needs of Beach Energy through requirements workshops
Delivered Hosting Strategy which was adopted and lead to SAP workloads being migrated to AWS
Develop and agree on key decisions through strategy papers and High-Level Architecture designs
Ongoing weekly architecture review sessions to address new challenges or decisions required through the design and build phases

Plan
Delivery was broken into three major streams of work:

Connectivity
Hosting
End User Compute

Rapid design phase for all three streams completed in parallel identifying required materials, implementation/migration plan
Early ordering of required infrastructure to de-risk supply wait times
Co-ordinated schedule with externally managed solution dependencies:
Telephony and WAN/cloud connectivity services (Telstra)
Site readiness changes (power, rack space, cabling)
Application delivery and migration streams
Origin and Beach project delivery teams

How was the solution implemented?

Waterfall delivery methodology was requested by the customer, however, some elements required more agile development where requirements were unclear, or work was constrained by timeline imperatives.

SXIQ dedicated a blended team of skillsets from across the required domains with lead architects for each stream under a program manager and program architect.

Multiple site visits were required to assess, prepare and implement at the remote sites.

A 6-week hyper care period was specified with on-site resources at most facilities to ensure any migration issues were addressed

The solution outcome

Project Success: Delivered committed deliverables ahead of time and under budget
Successful and timely migration of services: Beach Energy exited the support arrangements with the incumbent support provider by the target deadline
Minimal interruption to business during the transition: The hyper care period observed a very low number of relatively low priority tickets. No P1 tickets were raised against the infrastructure solutions implemented by SXIQ
Uplifted infrastructure solution standards: Beach Energy IT now possesses standard infrastructure patterns for deploying remote site WAN, LAND and hosting solutions. These patterns were utilised in a recent new site deployment at Beach Energy
Improved PC User Experience: Beach Energy user communities now enjoy all the benefits of new PCs with Windows 10
Agility and speed: Beach Energy IT now has the capability to respond to with greater speed and agility to changing business demands in relation to SAP workloads and release management of applications and MOE updates.
Better controls and traceability: Through the implementation of SCCM to track devices and software as well manage the MOE and device configuration